Less than 24 hours after the Nets' announced they had fired head coach Lionel Hollins and re-assigned general manager Billy King, rumors have begun to swirl as to who Brooklyn owner Mikhail Prokhorov and team CEO Brett Yormak will hire next. The team's primary target, according to Yahoo! Sports Adrian Wojnarowski, is current Kentucky head coach John Calipari.
John Calipari reportedly wants $120 million to return to the Nets. Should Brooklyn go for it?
Brooklyn wants to reunite with Coach Cal, but it’s going to cost them to pry him away from Lexington.
Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
Calipari was hired by the Nets once before, in 1996, when he was handed a five-year, $15 million deal to leave the University of Massachusetts. He went 72-112 over two-plus seasons before being fired 20 games into the 1999 season. He then returned to college where he led the Memphis Tigers to the NCAA Tournament four times and the Final Four once.
Calipari was pried away by the University of Kentucky in 2009. In six years in Lexington, he’s led the Wildcats to four Final Four appearances and one national championship victory.
Calipari, however, is interested in returning to the NBA, according to Wojnarowski. He reportedly was interested in the then-vacant Pelicans head coaching job -- where he would have been reunited with former Kentucky star Anthony Davis -- and last spring had conversations with the Kings, who were informed that it would take a 10-year, $120 million deal for him to make the leap back to the pros.
Calipari is currently making around $9 million at Kentucky and has told NBA teams that he'd require a raise. In 2014, he turned down a 10-year, $80 million offer to run the Cavaliers. The $120 million number is based on the $12 million Phil Jackson is currently pulling in to run the Knicks, according to Wojnarowski. He was close to signing with the Kings last year but owner Vivek Ranadive' minority owners didn't want to pull the string on such a substantial salary, according to Wojnarowski.
Now it appears that if Calipari wants back in the NBA, the Nets are his shot.
Why hiring Calipari makes sense for the Nets
Any team hiring Calipari is betting on two things: his ability to coach and his ability to lure his former Kentucky stars to whatever city he’s currently working in. Over 24 seasons, he’s won 603 games and lost just 178 (not counting any of those vacated victories). He’s taken four different schools to the Final Four. He’s found and developed NBA players at every stop and the league is full of former pupils of his.
He may not be known as an Xs-and-Os wizard, but Calipari clearly knows what he’s doing. You can’t attribute all that success -- both from a team standpoint and player development -- to superior recruiting.
There's also the connection he has with all those former top recruits of his who are now among the NBA's elite. This, according to Wojnarowski, is an attribute that he's pitching to the Nets. Former Kentucky stars DeMarcus Cousins and John Wall are both scheduled to become free agents over the next three years. Calipari, who's remained close with Cousins, Wall and many of his other former player, believes he'd be able to lure them to Brooklyn.
Calipari would bring hope and direction to a team currently lacking both. The Nets also surely believe that he’d energize a fan base that over the past few years has been lulled to sleep.
Why hiring Calipari doesn’t make sense for the Nets
Because it would just be another case of the Nets chasing and throwing bags of money at the shiniest name available without actually addressing the issues that have derailed the organization. The Nets’ issues, the ones that have caused them to get off to a 10-27 start and fall to third to last in the league in attendance, cannot be fixed solely by bringing in a smooth talking pitchman.
New Jersey's Failure
Calipari has won a lot of games over his career, but he’s never been known as a brilliant tactician. His game has always been recruiting, and providing one-and-done players an optimal developmental setting. But running an NBA franchise takes more than recruiting big names.
There’s also the notion that some of the big names which Calipari reportedly believes are dying to reunite with him don’t actually want to spend their adult years being berated by a head coach. Here’s more from Woj:
There are those close to [his former players] who say that most of his ex-stars remain reluctant to committing to 82 games a year of Cal’s abrasive style. It wore out players fast in the 1990s in New Jersey, and Calipari would need to bring a different disposition to the NBA and prove that he’s willing to treat NBA players like men, not teenagers.
Oh, and let’s not forgot how poorly things went the last time Calipari tried his hand at the professional game. Sure, that was a long time ago. But has Calipari really changed that much in the 20 years since the Nets last fired him?
Prokhorov said in a press conference on Monday he would prefer to have a separate coach and GM. That might also make Calipari’s hire more unlikely.
There’s also the issue of if Calipari would want to leave Lexington. He’s built Kentucky into the country’s premier program, and has another monster recruiting class coming next season. Calipari reiterated his focus is only on Kentucky right now on Twitter:
You may have heard me say this before: I absolutely have the best coaching job in sports and I plan on being at Kentucky for a long time.
— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) January 11, 2016 I am not negotiating with ANYBODY. My total focus is on this team and winning the next game.
— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) January 11, 2016 At a press conference on Monday morning, Prokhorov said “Coach Cal is a great coach, but we won’t be discussing today any name.”
Likelihood of Calipari ending up in Brooklyn (5/10)
“He kept saying it wasn’t about the money, but he kept talking about the money,” one of the Kings’ minority owners told Wojnarowski. If that’s indeed the case, no team will offer Calipari more money than Prokhorov’s Brooklyn Nets.
It’s clear that Yormark is interested in bringing in Cal, and inking a big-time name is exactly the type of move Prokhorov seems to enjoy making. It might not happen until after the current college season, but it seems like there’s at least a chance this is finally the job that gets Calipari back in the NBA.
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